“Terrified,” Rosina says.
To anyone else, Mami’s nod would be almost imperceptible, but to Rosina it is like a mountain moving. A small glimmer of gratitude pulses through her, like one single heartbeat, and it is more than enough. This is the scale of their love.
Erin is as calm and collected as Rosina’s ever seen her. She’s rubbing her hands together the way she does when she’s nervous, but it’s more excited than anxious, almost joyful. Her mother sits on the bench next to her, closer than Erin would normally allow. She seems more confused than angry or scared, as if this is all a terrible mistake, as if she can’t even imagine that her daughter is capable of doing something that would bring them to the police station. She has no idea what her daughter is capable of.
Rosina stands next to Erin while Mami marches up to the front desk to get some answers. “They’re waiting for Grace to get here,” Erin tells Rosina. “They want to talk to us all together.”
“Is my daughter being arrested?” Mami demands, her old fire returned. Rosina never thought she could possibly feel sorry for a police officer, but there’s always a first for everything. She smiles at the sight of her tiny mother bullying the cop, sees a glimpse of herself, of her own courage, and it pushes out her fear, just a little.
The front door opens. Grace and her family walk in as a pack, as a single unit, connected. Rosina’s mom turns around and a look passes between the two mothers, so brief and subtle Rosina almost doesn’t catch it, and for a moment her mother is not cruel or angry or even scared; for a moment all Rosina sees is love.
The officer at the front desk makes a call. Chief Delaney emerges from his office, wiping crumbs off his mouth with the back of his hand. “All right, ladies,” he says. “Let’s make this quick. Are you ready to talk to me?”
None of them says anything.
Delaney sighs. “Since you’re minors, I guess I have to tell you that you’re allowed to bring your parents in.”
All three girls say no without hesitation.
They are nervous as they walk to Chief Delaney’s office, but they are not scared. The world is so much bigger than this tiny place, and justice is so much more complicated than the whims of this small man. Their understanding of the judicial system is limited, but they are sure something is going to happen now. They know Delaney can’t stop it. They know the county sheriff is on their side. They have evidence. They have truth. There are finally people—adults—who want to hear it. The girls know, in some small way, they have already won.
What they don’t know is that at the same time their parents were driving them to the station, county deputies were also arriving at the homes of Spencer Klimpt, Eric Jordan, and Ennis Calhoun. Sirens alerted entire neighborhoods of their arrival. Neighbors lined the streets to watch the boys get taken away in handcuffs and shoved into the back of cop cars.
With the door closed to the chief’s office, the girls have no idea what’s happening in the rest of the police station. They don’t know that as they attempt to tell the bored and only half listening police chief their side of the story, the county sheriff arrives. They don’t know the sheriff’s been trying to get ahold of Chief Delaney all night, ever since he talked with Cheyenne. They don’t know how Delaney has a habit of avoiding the sheriff’s calls, how he resents him for trying to make his job harder by insisting on jurisdictional communication. The girls certainly don’t know the sheriff already dislikes the chief almost as much as they do.
Do the girls know when the boys enter the building? On some level, can they feel their presence?
The boys are whisked away into separate rooms as they wait for their parents to arrive. If they were smart, they wouldn’t talk. They’d wait for lawyers. They’d play the game. But maybe fear—maybe even something else—has clouded reason. Maybe one of the boys is already talking. Maybe, all this time, he has been desperate to purge his shame.
In two separate rooms, truth is being told. In two other rooms, boys hold on to silence like a life preserver.
Neither they nor the girls are aware of the waiting area slowly filling up with their classmates. Word spreads fast in small towns.
One after another, they arrive: Melissa Sanderson, ex-cheerleader and Rosina’s love; Elise Powell, jock; Sam Robeson, drama club girl; Margot Dillard, student body president; Lisa Sutter, cheer squad captain; Serina Barlow, rehab girl; gossips Connie Lancaster and Allison Norman; Lucy’s old friends Jenny and Lily; the multicolor-haired freshmen Krista and Trista. All these girls who would normally never mix. Others. More. Everyone.
The Nowhere Girls are here. They are everywhere.
When Rosina, Grace, and Erin emerge, blinking, from Chief Delaney’s office, the station erupts in an explosion of sound. The three girls try to figure out where all the noise is coming from. What is all that cheering? Girls’ voices bounce off walls and ceiling and floor, gathering momentum, gaining speed, crashing into one another.
In the midst of the chaos, Rosina’s eyes settle on the one small place of silence. In a corner of the waiting area, apart from the crowd’s madness, stand her mother and Mrs. Salter, facing each other, eyes closed, holding hands. Praying. Searching for peace in their own way.
Someone’s giddy voice breaks through: “Holy crap, you guys. There are a ton of news vans outside.”
Then office doors open, one by one by one, perfectly timed: Spencer, Eric, Ennis. A silence even louder than cheers washes over the police station. It is the stillness at the edge of a cliff—so many eyes watching, so much breath being held—the moment before the fall.
As Spencer exits one office, he sees Ennis walking out of another across the room. “What did you tell them?” he snarls at his friend, breaking the silence.
Ennis’s head is down. He does not look up, does not respond, does not acknowledge anything that is happening. He is deflated, empty. He has said things inside that room that he can never take back.
“What the fuck did you say?” Spencer screams, then the whole room flinches as he lunges toward Ennis.